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Review: Asus Republic of Gamers GT51 gaming desktop

Review: Asus Republic of Gamers GT51 gaming desktop

Andre Rodrigues

The Asus GT51 Desktop is a beast of a machine, designed to take down the likes of Alienware for good. With specs that the GT51 sports, there is no game out there that can properly push it to the limit, but all of this comes for a whooping price of Rs. 3,25,900

| Updated: Jan 6, 2017, 02:35PM IST

Critic Rating4.5/5

User Rating4/5

Asus revealed the evil looking GT51
Desktop at CES 2016 to scores of wow across the world. A beast of a machine, designed to take down the likes of Alienware for good. Gamers in India went about their work, like everything else good in
gaming, the GT51 was never going to make it to our shores. Until
Asus revealed that it is going to be sold here, just in time for the new Doom.

Design and Build Quality The look of this
machine is impressive. A very large cabinet, with angles like that of a Lamborghini. What strikes about the machine is the two slits that are like angry eyes that glow red. At the base of it is a turbine like outlet, which looks like a jet
engine, or something straight out of Iron Man's suit, capable of displaying 8 million colors. We half expected this to move when we switched it on, like a fan. Except it didn't. Well, it looks fantastic nonetheless.

The build quality is fairly good, what was disappointing is that the cabinet is made out of molded plastic. After a bit of time spent with the cabinet and closer examination, even the turbine felt like the plastic on a kids toy. I know it is asking for much, but for a PC this expensive, it would have been cool if it was in
metal. Atleast parts of it. Though, Asus had to keep the weight down. We could barely carry this.

What was neat, apart from the front glowing parts, was the top panel had this very cool Byzantine like grille work. Which looked really intricate. The left side panel had a window, which you can peek into it's angry innards. Which also glowed red. The GT51 is not a cabinet to hide. This is one you keep right up there on your mantelpiece. Though more than once those eyes in the dark freaked us out.

In the box there is a gaming keyboard and mouse bundled, but both were yawn worthy. A mechanical keyboard perhaps or a better mouse from Asus's amazing gaming lineup. Perhaps the excellent ROG Claymore which launched with this device. That aside, the fun part is that this PC comes with it's own wearable. Yes, a wrist band that lets you be Tony Stark to your GT51. More on this below.

Ports and Connectors The top houses three
USB 3.0 ports and one USB C port. Which is handy if you have devices that use this. There is also a mic and headphone jack out front. The back IO panel has several USB 3.0 ports and USB 2.0 for peripherals. The two
graphic cards had several DisplayPorts and HDMI so you could connect multiple displays for surround gaming.

Specs The GT51 is powered by a 6th Generation Intel Core i7-6700X, which is an eight core Skylake
processor. The GPU's are two Titan X's in an SLI. Which means they are connected to work together in tandem via a bridge, for double power. Enough to run 4k across three monitors. For RAM there's an insane 64GB of DDR 4. For storage there are couple of SSD's, plus a few hidden things. Powering it all is the Asus Maximus VIII motherboard.

Now with the new Nvidia 1080 cards revealed to be way faster than the Titan X's at half the price of one Titan X, Asus will hopefully have an option to swap out the Titan X's for Nvidia's new Pascal graphic architecture cards.

Performance and Overclocking No matter what we threw at this gaming juggernaut, the GT51 ran perfectly. From Witcher 3 to Tom Clancy's: The Division maxed out at 4k using Nvidia's Dynamic Super Resolutions yielded a buttery 60 frames per second, without any hint of stutter. One Titan X is more than enough to run everything at 60fps, add in one more and you have gross graphic overkill. With specs that the GT51 sports, there is no game out there that can properly push it to the limit. There's no doubt that this desktop will last for a few years. Not to mention you can swap out the graphic cards for new ones later in the cycle.

There was no liquid cooling, but looking at the airflow, the turbine in front does indeed suck in air and expels out the top and back along with the heat. In the hot Bangalore summer, the desktop did get a bit heated, but nothing to be worried about. Even after overclocking the system kept it's cool, but it also could be that the games did not tax the system too much.

Now that we got the performance out of the way, let's talk about that mysterious wearable. Locked deep within the evil GT51, Asus has built in a Shadow
Drive. A storage partition that's can only be accessed by wearing the wearable, which has an NFC chip. All you need to do is touch it to the eye in the front. Now what this also do is start up the overclocking. With the wearable the machine puts the pedal to the metal. This was a neat gimmick, however after the initial excitement wore off, the wearable was on the tray on top of the cabinet. Though the wearable at work drew quite a few eyes.

Verdict

The Asus Republic of Gamers GT51 Gaming machine is bristling with the latest gaming tech, and hardware all wrapped up in an impressive exterior. All of this does not come cheap, costing around Rs.3,25,900, you can get a small car at it's price. Plastics and the bundled accessories could have been better at this price. The wearable is nifty though.

Bottom line is, the GT51 is for those who want a blazing fast gaming machine out of the box, without wading through all those specs and dealing with assemblers. For those who have the buying power and want their gaming machine and performance to match their Lamborghini.